by J. A. Baker
She takes a breath, composes herself, tries to not think about how she looks compared to the manicured creature standing in front of her. Drawing on reserves of strength she didn’t know she possessed, Leah looks directly into Chloe’s face, clamps her teeth together and smiles.
‘No,’ she finally manages to croak, as Chloe holds out the card for her to take. ‘I don’t need your help. I don’t need anything from you except Jacob. You broke up my relationship with him. You’ve ruined my life and I will never ever forgive you.’
A sigh, an eye-roll then a loud guffaw. Chloe’s laugh is shrill, loaded with venom. She shakes her head pitifully and glares at Leah from under her long lashes, almost spitting out the words as she speaks. ‘Okay, I’ve had enough of this charade. No more being nice. If this is how you want to play it, then so be it.’ Leaning forwards, Chloe lowers her voice to a hiss. ‘Get the fuck off my doorstep, you useless deluded piece of crap. I’ve just about had enough of you and your lies. I’ve tried to warn you off, I’ve tried to be nice to you but it hasn’t worked so now I’m going to tell it like it is. If you don’t shift your arse, I’m going to call the police and report you for harassment.’ She steps back into the shadows, smiling, arms folded over her chest triumphantly.
It’s all Leah can do to stop herself from stepping forward and launching herself at this woman, jabbing her in the chest and reminding her that she and Jacob were an item long before Chloe came on the scene, that she knew the feel of his skin and the contours of his body long before Chloe did, that she knew the sweet aroma of his warm breath, his voice as he murmured her name over and over while they were making love in his bed.
Leah remains in place, her feet locked together, her eyes boring into Chloe’s. She is determined not to be browbeaten by this woman. She knows her own mind and she also knows that Jacob still harbours feelings for her. He’s not so cold as to be able to switch them off so easily and so rapidly after meeting Chloe. What she and Jacob had was something special. Something permanent. Chloe is a blip, a pimple on the horizon. Soon she will be gone.
‘I know people, tough people,’ Chloe whispers as she bends down to stare into Leah’s wan face. ‘So, if a visit by the police doesn’t scare you off, then maybe a visit from some of my hard-knock friends will.’ She leans even closer to Leah, eyes dark, narrowed in anger. ‘Can I make a suggestion? That you fuck off right now, or I’ll call them and send a picture of you so they know exactly who it is they’re looking for.’ Out of nowhere, she produces a mobile phone, holds it in front of Leah’s face and begins snapping, taking a series of photos, one after another after another.
It’s a spur of the moment thing, a reaction provoked by Chloe taking the pictures without her consent. She didn’t mean to do it. It just happened. Leah’s arm raises and connects with the mobile, knocking it to the floor where it spins around, the screen splintering into a hundred fine cracks.
A second passes, perhaps two, a stunned silence hanging between them until Chloe steps forward and grabs Leah’s arm, her fingers digging deep into the flesh, nails pressing on bone. ‘You’ll be getting a bill for that. Now do me a favour and piss off before I really lose my temper, okay?’
Leah steps back, stunned at the ferocity of the reaction. She didn’t know Chloe had it in her. She watches her bend down and scoop up the mobile, turning it over and over in her hands as she inspects the damage, her eyes glittering with untethered fury. Leah knows it then, that this is the moment when things will change. They’ve crossed a line. She has crossed a line. The damaged phone is just the beginning. She has no idea how she knows this but a tight sour sensation slithering just beneath the surface of her skin tells her that something unpleasant is about to take place. The tang of retribution is heavy in the air. Perhaps not now, not here in the next few minutes, but soon.
Leah moves forward, perhaps to placate her nemesis; she doesn’t quite know why she has closed the gap between them but before she can stop herself, Leah has touched Chloe’s shoulder.
Chloe recoils as if burnt.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Chloe’s eyes are on fire, a rage burning deep within them, a flickering of hatred focused directly at Leah who shivers, trying to stem her own feelings. It doesn’t work.
Without thinking, she brings up her hand and slaps Chloe across the face, the sting on her palm causing her to take a step back. She stares at her reddening flesh then up at the flare of pink of Chloe’s cheek. It was a hard hit, a lot of negativity and hatred behind that strike. She shouldn’t have done it. It’s too late for regrets and second thoughts now though. It’s all too late.
Chloe stumbles back, her head shaking from side to side, her shoulders dipped, her whole body looking as if it’s about to combust.
Fire bursts through Leah’s veins, an unexpected feeling of authority coursing through her as she observes how weak Chloe suddenly looks, how pitiful and characterless. No more the confident, controlling woman who just a few seconds ago, was ordering Leah about, telling her what to do. Threatening her. She is now a reprimanded child, submissive, passive, her eyes glassy with tears, her mouth hanging open.
Leah hadn’t meant to hit her; she didn’t plan to come here and mete out any form of physical violence, but Chloe threatened her, leaned into her face, her features contorted with fury. Leah had to protect herself, to let Chloe know that she’s not to be messed with. She and Jacob have already done enough damage to her, crushing her confidence and stripping away her dignity bit by painful bit. It’s about time the tables were turned.
Leah would like to say she is sorry for hitting Chloe, but she’s not. It actually feels rather good. It has empowered her, elevated her flagging confidence and self-respect.
Turning away, Leah takes three long strides to the end of the path before looking back over her shoulder to a now weeping Chloe who is clinging to the side of her face, her long pale fingers covering the patch of reddened skin.
‘Don’t think this is the end, Chloe, because it’s not. I’m just warming up. Let this be a warning to you. And I don’t want any police involvement. It’s only my word against yours anyway, isn’t it?’ She spreads her hands apart and looks around at the empty street, a long avenue devoid of life. Parked cars, no people. Just a long line of beech trees that stand proudly, stoic and solid with their gnarled arthritic limbs and smooth grey bodies. ‘There are no witnesses, nobody to say any of this actually happened. So if I were you, I’d step away from your threats and I’d step away from Jacob because no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that he’s yours, I can assure you, he isn’t. He and I are meant to be together and I won’t stop my visits until everything is back to how it was before you turned up in our lives and ruined what we had.’
Without waiting for a reply, Leah turns, the click of her heels echoing down the street as she slams the gate behind her and makes her way back home.
11
Leah is standing outside her parents’ house, staring in the window, her fingers pressed against the glass, her fingertips hot against the cool surface. Her heart swells. Her throat is tight with anxiety as she watches her mum and dad, intrigued as they go about their lives inside their home, unaware of her presence.
The house is as she remembers it. It’s been years since she has visited and she is surprisingly satisfied to see that everything has remained the same. The overstuffed chair in the corner still needs to be re-upholstered, its pale lilac fabric as threadbare and ragged as she remembers. The coffee table in the centre of the room is still home to a wad of magazines and badly folded newspapers, and her father’s reading glasses are still perched on the arm of the old brown leather sofa. The ancient squat wooden clock is still sitting on the stone mantelpiece, its gilt face peppered with dirt, its hands struggling to keep time through lack of maintenance. Leah takes a deep breath and swallows down the lump that has risen in her throat. It’s as if she has never stepped away from the place where she grew up; it is a moment in time, frozen and preser
ved to tear at her emotions and fill her with grief for the childhood she misses, for the family who shut her out. Leah blinks, swallows, tries to stem the sadness and crippling anxiety that bites at her, reminding her of who she is.
And what she did.
A lone tear escapes and rolls down her cheek. She wipes it away, angry at the loss she feels, angry at herself for allowing her emotions to get the better of her. She’s usually tougher than this, but then the accident has weakened her, left her feeling vulnerable and fragile. It’s as if her outer layers of skin are slowly falling away one by one until only her centre is left, naked and unprotected against the world, defenceless against its many blows.
Leah moves away from the glass, unsure why or how she even got here. In a strange way, she is now becoming accustomed to these unexpected ventures, finding herself in places that she knows well, with no memory of getting there. It’s as if she has stumbled upon them in some sort of somnambulistic stupor, her subconscious leading her to places that are deeply embedded in her memory and pivotal to her existence. There’s a reason why she is here, there has to be. She just doesn’t know what it is yet.
She watches her parents, observing how they carry on behind the glass as if she isn’t even there. Her father moves over to her mother who is slumped in a chair in the corner, her head lowered, her eyes shielded by her cupped hands. Her body language screams wretchedness and misery. On her lap is a small green box. Leah shivers. She knows what that box is, what it contains. It sat for so many months on her mother’s dressing table before it was moved, before they took it to the top of the cliff at Grayston-on-Sea and scattered her brother’s ashes into the four winds.
She had argued that it was a bad call, that it was the last place he should be laid to rest. That town, that clifftop held nothing but bad memories for everyone, but her parents had been insistent, arguing that Ellis had been fond of little Lucy, that there was nowhere else he could go. Her mother couldn’t stand the thought of him being buried in the ground, his remains rotting into the earth.
Leah suspected there was another motive, that her parents feared vandalism once word got around about where he was buried, that his final resting place would be desecrated by locals with no shame. Even death didn’t stop their hatred and warped views of what was right and what was wrong. Her parents denied it, of course. They claimed that they wanted him to be free, to go wherever the weather dictated and to be at one with nature. Her father had said that Ellis had loved the outdoors, that they were doing what he would have wanted.
Nothing she said at the time could persuade them otherwise but Leah knew the truth, that her tiny mousy mother simply couldn’t bear the thought of her dead son being visited by gangs of thugs who believed that what they were doing was right as they knocked over the flowers on his grave and graffitied his headstone. They would say that they were doing it for little Lucy, that they were simply evening things up, restoring the balance and giving him exactly what he deserved when in truth they were just thugs looking for trouble.
‘And where do you suggest he should go, Leah?’ her father had shouted when she reiterated her belief that the location was all wrong. She hadn’t replied and ended up lowering her head away from his piercing gaze. That steely stare was another reminder of who she really was, his subliminal message telling her that she was an outsider, an addition to the family after Maria’s premature death.
That’s why they had adopted her. She was no more than a substitute, a damaged toddler adopted from the care system in a desperate bid to replace their previous child. Leah’s own parents had been too interested in drugs and alcohol to take an interest in their own daughter and so social services had stepped in and removed her.
Her new parents were an older grieving couple with a daughter who had died just a few weeks after being born prematurely and a young son they had had later in life. They had tried for another baby and unable to have any more after Ellis they looked at adopting. They had initially fostered Leah and then took her into their family. She was too young to recall any of it but had felt overwhelmed with anger at not being told the full story, at not being allowed to know about her real parents. Who were they? Where had they lived? After discovering her true origins, she became angry. She had always been given to bouts of rage but the savage wrath that burned inside her after that day of discovery was like no other. She became rebellious, her temper ready to boil over at the slightest provocation. That was why she did what she did, to get back at them all for forgetting about her, for pushing her away and pretending they were all one big happy family when they were anything but.
She removes her hands from the glass, looks down at them, at the tremble in her fingers, at the whiteness of her own skin. She can’t think about this anymore. It’s all in the past and too late to undo the damage and the hurt. What’s done is done.
Inside the house there is a movement. Her head snaps up. She watches her mother stand, clutching the box close to her chest, her father’s arm draped over her shoulders. They look smaller somehow, as if sorrow has squashed them, pushed them closer to the ground, gravity and grief forcing them deep into the loam. How has she only just noticed this? Their misery, their ageing faces, lined with worry and angst, how did she not see it earlier? They turn and leave the room, grief for their son etched into their features. Another death. Another child to mourn.
Before she can stop it, tears begin to fall. She has to stop this. For years she refused to give in to regret, priding herself on being a hard-nosed individual who has survived many setbacks. But things have changed. She has developed a softness in her centre, the very essence of her altering, relaxing and becoming more pliable, and more susceptible to hurt and remorse.
The room is empty now. She waits, sees nothing else happening within and turns to leave. She will never understand why they scattered Ellis where they did. They could have buried him with Maria, should have buried him there alongside their other daughter. She thinks that perhaps they did what they did to get back at her, to make certain that that day at Grayston-on-Sea would always be there, like a huge stumbling block in their lives, a hurdle they would never get over.
More tears spill out, obscuring her vision. She blinks, looks again at the house and sees that it has changed. A bubble of air sticks in her chest. She lets out a hiccupping sigh, her fingers fumbling through her hair to find that smooth patch of skin on her scalp, the place that gives her such comfort, helping her to realise that pain can indeed help alleviate stress.
Rubbing at the flesh with her cool fingertips, Leah can see that she isn’t standing outside her parents’ house after all. It’s not her childhood home. She is here, outside her own flat looking in the bay window of her room. Memories, that’s all it was. Dark, painful memories that flood her mind on a regular basis of late, crowding her in, making her think she is going mad.
She steps inside the grey shadowy hallway and closes the door behind her, the dull click reverberating around the empty space. Grainne and Innes must be at work, which is where she should be once the effects of the crash have worn off, once this shroud of loneliness and the pitiless bouts of excruciating pain leave her. If they ever do, that is.
A stack of mail is piled up on the old console table farther down the hallway. Leah sorts through the envelopes, retrieving her own letters and examining them with a critical eye. Most of it is junk mail from people selling her insurance and offering services for repairs and maintenance to a house she doesn’t own. One though, stands out from the others – a brown envelope with her name and address printed on it. There is no stamp and it’s been franked. A sliver of anxiety slips under her skin. Just another thing to worry about, that’s all this letter is going to be. Just something else to knock her off balance and drag her down into the gutter. As if she doesn’t have enough going on. As if losing her boyfriend and being in constant pain isn’t enough.
A noise to her right causes her to stiffen. She had presumed the house was empty, everybody at work. A door gro
ans, a floorboard creaks. There is the shuffle of feet and suddenly Grainne is standing next to her, an expression of concern on her face as she watches Leah with a preciseness that alarms her. Grainne’s face is sharper than usual, angular and unaccommodating. Her grey eyes sweep over the wad of envelopes clasped in Leah’s hand.
‘Can I have a word, Leah? It’s about your rent.’
Leah’s spine stiffens. She’s up to date with her payments, she is sure of it. Or is she? Everything feels such a mess lately. Her head is lined with cotton wool, her usual organised thoughts disjointed, floating around in her head like confetti.
‘My rent?’ She is trying to sound nonchalant, undaunted by Grainne’s unwavering gaze and rigid stance. Leah cannot let her see how susceptible and weak she is right now, how her heart has begun to pound in her chest and how her palms are suddenly slick with sweat. Whatever this problem is with the rent, she has to stand her ground. With no partner, no friends and a job she is currently not attending, this flat is the only steady thing that she has in her life. It’s all she has.
‘You’re way behind with your payments, Leah. This month’s rent is overdue and I still haven’t had last month’s money.’ Grainne’s hands are on her hips now. Her cheeks have coloured up and a vein is bulging in her neck, pulsating as she speaks. A fleck of saliva escapes out of her lips and bursts in the air between them.
This is not the Grainne Leah knows. Things have changed. She has changed. ‘I’ll get it to you, I promise,’ Leah says, an element of panic creeping into her voice. She has no idea if she will be able to get the money to her or not. Her grocery shopping lately has consisted of packets of soups and loaves of bread that are past their sell by date. She doesn’t even know how much money she has in the bank, if indeed she has any. The letters in her hand grow hot. One of them is a bank statement. She chose to ignore it, to pretend it wasn’t there. She had hoped to sneak into her room to avoid bumping into Grainne. All these thoughts are in her head but there is no order to them, no cohesion or logic. Instead there is chaos and confusion, unwanted thoughts and distant memories crashing and colliding in her brain.